Aristide let out the breath he’d been holding. “I won’t tell you. And all the messages will be in code.” Gathering Finn into his arms, he petted a stray piece of orange hair back into place. “Perfect, b-b-brilliant boy,” he said, kissing Finn’s forehead. “What would I do without you?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Cordelia went with Malcolm to pick up the ashes from a crematorium in the northeast quarter. The box was small, but no smaller than any of the others lined up behind the counter. Malcolm wouldn’t carry it, so she tucked it under her arm.
“Glad we don’t have to see his face again,” said Cordelia, as they waited for the trolley. “The way they marked him up … I could hardly stand going to visit him in hospital. Those bruises…”
Malcolm made a small sound. She changed topics.
“We gonna do a funeral or something?” she asked. “For the rest of the folk at the Bee? He didn’t have no family in Amberlough, that I knew.” He shrugged, his shoulders stiff. “Queen’s sake, Mal. Say something.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“‘Sorry’ would be a good start.”
“Sorry? What for?”
“Being an ass? There’s more important things going on right now than you scowling over my knocking Tory. Jealousy ain’t flattering, especially not now.”
“You think that’s why I’m bruised? Get your head out of your rear, Delia.”
“It’s just I can’t help thinking we’d be a little kinder to each other if you weren’t still so pinned about it.”
“We really gonna talk about this right now?”
“When else? He was our friend—our friend, Mal—and now he’s dead, and I ain’t gonna scrap with you over him anymore, y’understand?”
He opened his mouth, but the trolley bell cut off whatever he’d been about to say, and he didn’t try again.
They got on board and struggled to the back. Even with all the windows cranked wide, it was close and stinking and far too loud to talk. Instead, Cordelia let her hand drift toward Malcolm’s. He curled his fingers into a fist, but she was patient. Eventually, he relaxed, and covered her knuckles with his palm.
“Where are we headed?” he asked.
“Let’s go to mine,” she said. “I got a bottle of gin—if you promise not to throw it across the room. We can light a couple of candles and set out an extra glass.” She put her free hand on the little brown box, where it sat on her lap.
When Malcolm didn’t say anything, she looked over to see if he was angry. But she caught him swallowing, hard, his eyes aimed up like he was wearing mascara and trying not to let it run.
* * *
Cordelia climbed out of sleep to the sound of frantic hammering on the door of her flat. She’d gotten a new lock, with a chain; it rattled on the freshly painted drywall. Cordelia hoped it wouldn’t scratch. She’d fixed the place up nice with the cash coming in from Ari’s tar.
Her mouth was dry, her eyes gritty. She hurt all over, with grief and sore muscles. Malcolm took up most of the small bed, forcing her to sleep cramped up. There was a reason they’d always stayed at his.
“I’m coming,” she said. Her voice came out a rasp. The racket didn’t stop. “Hang it,” she shouted, “I’m coming! Don’t break down the door.”
Malcolm rolled over and rubbed a hand across his face. “Mother’s tits. What time is it?”
Cordelia looked out the window and got a smarting eyeful of sunrise colors. “Too early.” The banging on the door doubled. “I swear, I’ll ram their own fist up their ass.”
She grabbed the discarded sheet from the floor—the night had been hot, and Malcolm was better than a radiator. Wrapped in threadbare cotton folds, she shuffled to the door and undid the locks. Opening it a crack, she saw Tito in the corridor. His thin, brown face was pallid. A streak of soot marked one cheek.
“Tee,” she said, through a yawn. “What’re you doing here?”
“Mr. Sailer in?” he asked. “He weren’t at his flat, and I didn’t know where else to try him.”
Springs creaked behind her. Malcolm called out, “Dell, who is it?”
“Mr. Sailer?” Tito bobbed like a buoy, trying to get past Cordelia. She stepped back and let him in.
“Tito?” Malcolm pulled a pillow over his tackle and sat up. “D’you know what time it is?”
“Sorry, sir, but you’ve gotta get down to the Bee. Now.”
That was all he needed to say. Malcolm snatched his trousers from the foot of the bed and stepped into them, flinging modesty aside with Cordelia’s pillow.
Cordelia took a little more convincing. She grabbed Tito’s sleeve and pulled him to the dormer window. “Sit,” she said. “I’ll make some coffee.” She had a gas ring now—a good one.
“Ain’t time for that, Miss Lehane.” He shook free. “Get your clothes on if you’re coming.”
“Will you at least say what happened?”
The card boy cast a nervous look over his shoulder, where Malcolm was tugging his undershirt over his head. “Blackboots,” he said. “They busted the place up. Tried to set a fire.”
Malcolm’s head popped out of his collar. “What?”
“Didn’t spread, sir.” Tito held his hands up like he was apologizing. “Just … the marquee’s a little scorched, and the lobby—”
Malcolm didn’t wait to hear more. He snatched his watch and wallet from the bedside table and was gone. Tito scrambled after him.
“Queen’s cunt.” Cordelia threw her sheet aside and dressed in a hurry. On her way out the door, she took the small brown box of Tory’s ashes and put it in her purse. He’d want to be there, if the Ospies hadn’t got him burnt up first.
* * *
They took a cab. Malcolm never took cabs. This early, traffic was light and they reached the Bee just as the sun was coming up in earnest.
“Mother and sons,” said Malcolm, letting the oath out like a breath he’d held too long.
Soot and smoke streaked the front of the building. The gilding had peeled from the double doors, showing wood burnt black. White paint splashed the wreckage with an Ospie quartered circle in a circle.
The fire had started in the ticket booth, where the glass was broken in the front. “Figure they threw it in that way,” said Tito. “Lucia got here early to tidy up, and called the hounds. They sniffed around but weren’t much help. Blackboots own ’em now. She rang up Ytzak after they’d gone. He says he thinks it were some stupid kids with a handle of white blinder stuffed with a rag. Anyone cleverer would’ve used gas or paraffin. He says.”
“Does he?” Malcolm stepped across the gutter and crossed the footpath. He ran a thumb along the charred counter of the ticket booth. “Guess we’re lucky, then.”
“We gonna do the show tonight?” asked Tito.
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Cordelia. “Of course we are.”
Malcolm didn’t say anything.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
“Thanks for coming,” said Cyril, after the waiter had left them alone with their drinks.
The dim lights of the Crabtree House slid over Cross’s silvery hair as she nodded. “It’s been a while since I dropped in at the Crab. It’s changed a lot.”
“You could say the same about most of Gedda.”
She shrugged. “The seeds were there. Even before I went off. You know they were. Bless Amberlough, but our state takes first prize at putting the squeeze on. There were times I was glad to be in Liso—at least there everybody who wants you dead will say it to your face. Here it was all—”
“Shake with the right, shoot with the left?”
“You said it.”
“Makes emigration sound like a treat, almost.”
“Better hurry if you’re going.” She looked into her whiskey like it would solve her problems. “From what I hear, the Ospies are coming up with a whole set of travel restrictions. And I hear a lot; Veedge has me working Ins and Outs under the new management—you heard Kor
yon appointed him emergency director?”
“I heard.” Cyril wondered how Van der Joost would feel about Cross’s nickname. Probably nothing could really get him pinned, now that he had his little puppet in place. Koryon had been fourth in line for Hebrides’s position, and only too happy to follow Ospie orders.
“Technically, I’m still hobbled,” Cross added. “At least in the official Foxhole books. They said it’s for my protection—never know who might be pinned over one of Ada’s people switching sides—but I figure they just don’t want to pay me regular.”
“That’s how they’re doing mine as well. Expenses, no extra. I have to be on my best behavior; if the Ospies freeze my assets, I’m scratched.” There were better reasons, but Cross didn’t need to know them.
She made a face. “Bit-pinching fishwives. At any rate, Veedge brought in a bunch of new division heads. I’m under Nikita Krahe, doing customs and immigration. It’s a mess for now—old protocol, new orders, lotta spats over nothing. But watch out when they get it ironed flat. Things’ll change fast.”
“How’d you end up with the beat?” Cyril asked. “Ins and Outs, I mean.”
“I was doing it in Liso,” she said. “Monitoring trade. Since the Spice War, it’s been a murderer’s game over there, and they’ve got some interesting folk fighting up through the ranks. Just looking after Amberlough’s assets in rough country.”
“So, what do you do now? Catch smugglers?” He kept his hands relaxed around his glass, but inside his brogues he curled his toes tight.
“Just assessing the climate. Veedge wants everybody acting nice when the primary reps take a dive and the Ospies level with new regulations. He says I might be up for a promotion if I do good work.”
“‘Take a dive’?”
“Yeah. Acherby’s got a deal with them—they drop out of office and he consolidates power. They get plum positions in his new government.”
“What’s going to rattle folk? Besides the obvious.”
“Cargo limits,” she said. “Ospies want to keep Gedda’s goods in Gedda. Anything going upriver is golden. But you try to take it out of the country, the taxes’ll scratch you. Ask me, the salt folk are going to be madder at the riverboat captains than they are at the unionists. There’ll be fights at the docks for sure.”
“So public opinion isn’t a big concern.”
“Not on that front,” said Cross. “But the rest’ll be a tougher sell. It’ll be a lot harder to travel abroad. Lot of paperwork, and you’ll have to get bureau approval and a permit. Hope you weren’t looking to go on holiday.”
Cyril put his face in his hands. “Queen’s sake.”
“It’s not her you oughta be praying to.” Cross checked her watch—she wore it at the wrist, like a soldier. “‘Tits. I gotta get moving.”
He waved her off. “Of course. Thanks again. It’s good to talk to somebody who clocks me.”
“Anytime.” She swallowed the last of her whiskey, picked up her briefcase, and slipped her straw cloche into place. “See you around.”
* * *
On the top floor of a vacant office building in the northeastern quarter of the city, Aristide waited for Cross. He sat with one hip hitched up on a sawhorse, trying not to check his watch. He’d already looked at it twice in the last five minutes.
She was late. Very late. And he was worried. He needed the papers she was bringing, for himself and several clients, and he knew of no other way he could get them.
Just as he reached for his watch again, he heard the stairs squeak. He put his hand on the pistol holstered under his arm. Half a minute later there was a knock on the door—two long scratches, four quick taps. Cross’s signal. Rendezvous four. It was her.
Aristide twisted the lock. The open door revealed Cross in a high-collared summer jacket and a cloche pulled low over her forehead. The brim cast concealing shadows across her face. He shut the door behind her and relocked it, then turned to watch her pick her way through construction debris. Though the streetlights would keep anyone from seeing in the single window, she stayed well away from the glass.
“You’re late,” he said. “What happened?”
“Friend in need,” she said. “Cy wanted to jaw a minute. He looks like a steaming pile these days. Couldn’t say no.”
“My, my,” he said, carefully bland. She was baiting him. “I have missed your … c-c-colorful language.” If Cyril looked bad he was probably drinking too much. And not sleeping.
Cross snorted, like she hadn’t noticed his evasion. “Nice to see you too, Mack.”
“Mr. Lourdes’s reports are very thorough,” he said, relenting and kissing her cheek, “b-b-but there’s nothing like the genuine article.”
“Nice boy. Is all that bumbling and sweetness honest, d’you think, or an act? If he’s putting it on, I’m impressed.”
“I think Mr. Lourdes is much sharper than he seems, at first blush.”
“Blush,” said Cross, and laughed—a single, blunt sound. “He does do that. Anyhow, lucky you. Wish Cy’d play matchmaker for me.”
“P-P-Please, Merrilee. I make my own matches.”
“Speaking of.” She pulled a crumpled cigarette from the pocket of her slacks and lit it. The pop of the struck lucifer was loud in the hush of the vacant building. Exhaling a draconian plume, she said, “He’s come in rotten handy, Mr. Lourdes.”
Aristide relished the irony. Cyril had used Finn so casually as an entrée to the Bee, after his own treachery had curtailed his freedom of movement. Now Aristide was turning the trick around on him. Slight guilt, of course, for making pliable Finn into a tool, but desperate times and all that. “Did you have any trouble getting the papers?”
Cross laid her briefcase across the sawhorse and unlocked the catch, revealing a slim folio and a block of gray putty. She handed the folio to Aristide, who flipped it open and smoothed his hand over the blank travel permits.
“They were a breath to snatch,” she said. “There’s loads of ’em lying all over the place.”
“Gorgeous,” he said. “Did you manage to get a good impression of the new seal?”
She pulled the block of putty from her briefcase. “You’ll have to find a printer to work up a proper stamp. These don’t have Krahe’s signature or anything. I did get a sample, though. Do you have somebody with a steady hand?”
Aristide tucked the folio into his jacket. “I know just the person, yes.”
* * *
Zelda Peronides had gone to ground in a warehouse at the worse end of the harbor—not far from Central’s dockside facilities, if Cyril was to be believed. Aristide hoped she was keeping a low profile—with Culpepper in the trap, who knew what sort of person was running the Foxhole these days.
He found her in the foreman’s office overlooking the echoing cargo hangar. She was living there, and hadn’t left for days, probably. Balled-up napkins and grease-stained bags littered her desk. The smell of stale coffee and sleep sweat lingered in the stifling space. Zelda herself, usually so glamorous, had replaced her silk and velvet with a sleeveless jersey dress in brick red. The color would have suited her, if she weren’t so wan and haggard.
“Ari, darling.” She’d been chain smoking—her voice was dry. “How nice to see you. It’s been ages. Not the best time, though.”
He kissed both her cheeks. “I need to falsify some documents.”
Her frown was delicate. “I’d like to be tactful, darling, but you’re wretched at forgery.”
“Yes, but your p-p-people are very good.”
“Flatterer.” She smiled, catlike, and a little of her old pizzazz sparked back into her expression. “They’re also very expensive.”
“Even for an old friend?”
“Times being what they are,” she said, and waved an expressive hand rather than finish the sentence.
He lit a straight, nonchalant. Only when he’d breathed out did he say, “I’ll b-b-buy the Keeler pearls from you.”
She scoffed. “That’s
not payment.”
“Oh, don’t be unreasonable. You can’t move them, Zelda! Even unstrung they’re easy to p-p-pick out from the chaff. That shade of gold isn’t exactly inconspicuous, and each one is the size of an eyeball.” Only a mild exaggeration. “I’m doing you a favor.”
“And what are you planning to do with them?”
“I’ll wear them, for queen’s sake.”
“And get arrested? You saw what happened to Taormino.”
“I’ll wear them when I’m at home,” he said. “Will you sell?”
“All right.” She flapped her hand. “All right, yes, I’ll sell. Your neck in the noose, not mine.”
“My neck in the necklace, too.” He stroked his throat, as if the pearls already hung there.
Zelda rolled her eyes, crazed with red veins that gave her expression a mien of lunacy. “What are my little scriveners copying out for you?”
He slapped Cross’s folio onto her desk. “I’m not a fool. I know you’ll keep a batch for yourself. I don’t mind as long as you c-c-cut me in. And as long as you’re exceedingly careful who you sell them to.”
“I’m always exceedingly—”
“Zelda, I’m serious. They were difficult to acquire, and I don’t want to risk anything like it again so soon.”
She picked up the folio and let it fall open. As she read, her carefully plucked eyebrows—growing a bit ragged around the edges, now—rose by steady degrees. “Aristide Makricosta,” she said, articulating each syllable like a scolding nursemaid. “How did you come by these? And what exactly are they?”
“The Ospies are going to introduce exit visas.”
“They don’t have that authority. The parliament would need to vote on it.”
“Don’t be thick,” he said. “You know where we’re headed. We’ll be lucky if there’s a parliament left by the next session.”
“How many do you need?”
“Right now? A dozen or so.”
She shuffled the pages of the travel permit back in order and slipped the folio into a drawer of her desk. “Anything else, while you’re here?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Can you draw up some false identification for me?”
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